petals
Category Archives: death
the wrong stairs
My title sounds like an Edward Gorey book. I adore Edward Gorey’s books.
These are the wrong stairs. Don’t go down them.
The stairs are on North Beach. The cliffs are sand and clay. Sections collapse.
People have stopped building stairs down to the beach for the most part. They don’t last.
I longed for a house on the bluff or the beach. But I don’t anymore. I think about collapse. When we have an earthquake, sections of the bluff will collapse. I walk the beach anyhow. I don’t feel protected, I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel lucky. I feel…. mortal.
He just looks
sometimes eyes want
nice shoulders, I’ll say that
worn carhartts have seen work
can’t make assumptions
even the attorneys have boats
sand the brightwork on the weekends
and it’s not fall yet
so the shedboys aren’t hunting
winter warmth, house and embrace
she’s aware he’s looking
arched
grey watcher
older woman
invisible
to both
watch the projections
slither over each other
every day
written in response to etouffee’s She just looks at me
loss
For the Daily Prompt: famous.
This is not Michealangelo’s Pieta. This is from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, DC. This is Apres la temepete (After the Storm) by Sarah Bernhardt, a sculpture of a Breton peasant woman cradling the body of her grandson who had been caught in a fishermanโs nets. This is from about 1876.
I took this visiting my son at the end of last year.
Memorial Day and we remember our lost. Much love to you and yours.
happy
For Wordless Wednesday.
black on white
black on white
white on black
it doesn’t matter
angels falling
made to fall
at peace with falling
I let myself fall
at peace with falling
and wonder what that means?
death?
no
though there are times I long
for the Beloved
for union with the Beloved
for all in one
and one all
let go
when an angel falls
they are at peace
they are at peace
with falling
people
see black and white
people
see good and evil
people
separate
label
categorize
angels don’t
black on white
or
white on black
it doesn’t matter
there is no separation
we are one
Beloved
One
Heart and brain and alcohol, 2018
For the Daily Prompt: infect. Maybe heart and brain health could be an infectious idea…..
Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the US, around 24% of deaths every year. Strokes are fifth most common cause of death at 5%, dementia sixth most common at 3.6%, data here from 2014. Accidents have beaten strokes out for fourth place because of “unintentional overdose” deaths.
I did a physical on a man recently, who said what was the best thing he could do for his health?
“Reduce or better yet quit alcohol.” is my reply. Even though he’s within “current guidelines”. I showed him the first of these studies.
Two recent studies get my attention for the relationship between the heart and the brain and alcohol.
In this study: http://www.onlinejacc.org/content/64/3/281, 79,019 Swedish men and women were followed after completing a questionnaire about alcohol consumption.
They were followed from 1998 to 2009 and 7,245 cases of atrial fibrillation were identified. The relative risk for atrial fibrillation was alcohol dose dependent: that is, the people who did not drink had a relative risk of atrial fibrillation set at 1.0. At 1-6 drinks per week the risk was 1.07, at 7-14 per week the risk was 1.07, at 14-21 drinks per week 1.14 and at >21 drinks per week 1.39. They also break it down by number of drinks per day. So why do we care about atrial fibrillation? “Atrial fibrillation (AF)/atrial flutter (AFL), the most common cardiac arrhythmia, is accompanied with a 4- to 5-fold increased risk for stroke, tripling of the risk for heart failure, doubling of the risk for dementia, and 40% to 90% increase in the risk for all-cause mortality.”
Atrial fibrillation, stroke, congestive heart failure, dementia and 40-90% increase in all-cause mortality. Want to protect your brain and live longer? Quit alcohol.
Well, that instantly decreased my enthusiasm for alcohol, now down to one drink per week if that.
Here is a second study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)30134-X/fulltext?code=lancet-site
“Findings:
In the 599โ912 current drinkers included in the analysis, we recorded 40โ310 deaths and 39โ018 incident cardiovascular disease events during 5ยท4 million person-years of follow-up. For all-cause mortality, we recorded a positive and curvilinear association with the level of alcohol consumption, with the minimum mortality risk around or below 100 g per week. Alcohol consumption was roughly linearly associated with a higher risk of stroke (HR per 100 g per week higher consumption 1ยท14, 95% CI, 1ยท10โ1ยท17), coronary disease excluding myocardial infarction (1ยท06, 1ยท00โ1ยท11), heart failure (1ยท09, 1ยท03โ1ยท15), fatal hypertensive disease (1ยท24, 1ยท15โ1ยท33); and fatal aortic aneurysm (1ยท15, 1ยท03โ1ยท28). By contrast, increased alcohol consumption was log-linearly associated with a lower risk of myocardial infarction (HR 0ยท94, 0ยท91โ0ยท97). In comparison to those who reported drinking >0โโค100 g per week, those who reported drinking >100โโค200 g per week, >200โโค350 g per week, or >350 g per week had lower life expectancy at age 40 years of approximately 6 months, 1โ2 years, or 4โ5 years, respectively.”
Ok, over half a million people followed, 40K+ deaths, 39K+ heart events (heart attack, atrial fibrillation, new congestive heart failure, etc), that’s a pretty impressive study.
A 5% 12 ounce beer is 14 grams of alcohol. Here: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/what-standard-drink. Our local brewery and pourhouse usually serve pints, 16 oz, and the range is from 5% to over 9% alcohol. Two 9% pints is how many standard drinks? You do the math. Currently the recommendations in the US are no more than seven drinks per week for women (98 grams) and fourteen for men (196 grams) per week, no saving it up for the weekend, no bingeing. The UK stops at 98 grams for both men and women. The rest of Europe goes higher.
Heart and brain, how I love you! I like my brain and don’t want to pickle it. I think I’ll choose heart and brain over alcohol, long term over short term, health over escapism.
Have a great week!
More:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180220183954.htm
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30022-7/fulltext
http://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2016/08/26/16/48/consumer-news-stroke-esc-2016
I took the photograph. It reminds me of neurons in the brain.
Resources on opioid addiction
This is a list of resources on opioid addiction that I am putting together for a talk to a community advocate group this Thursday.
The big picture:
CDC Grand Rounds: Prescription Drug Overdoses โ a U.S. Epidemic, January 2012: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6101a3.htm
CDC 2018 (It’s not getting better yet.) https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0329-drug-overdose-deaths.html
Snohomish County:
Snohomish County:
http://mynorthwest.com/878895/snohomish-co-opioid-crisis/
http://www.heraldnet.com/news/state-house-backs-snohomish-county-opioid-help-center/
http://knkx.org/post/snohomish-county-jail-now-offering-medically-assisted-detox-inmates
Washington State Pain Law
https://www.doh.wa.gov/YouandYourFamily/PoisoningandDrugOverdose/OpioidMisuseandOverdosePrevention
Is it genes that make people addicts? (The short answer is genes are a minimal contribution. It is society and patterns learned in childhood and adulthood.)
Adverse Childhood Experiences (put people at way higher risk for addiction):
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/index.html
Books that helped me understand addiction (in my teens):
It will never happen to me by Claudia Black (about the patterns children take in addiction households to survive and cope with childhood)
Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown (a black male writes about his childhood in Harlem when heroin hit the community. He was in a gang at age 6.)
view
For the Daily Prompt: churn.
This is not a churn. It’s a cat. This is Princess Mittens. Oh, I miss her, but she is gone. I was looking for a photograph of students with a churn. I have one, but I found this instead. It is from my old phone photos and I don’t think that I took it: my son, I suspect.
Churning the internet…. “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth”.
Big D, little d, what begins with D?
Happy things starting with D:
Discrimination, death, delight.
I am happy that slowly, slowly, it feels as if there is change in the world and a decrease in discrimination. It is NOT gone by any means, but I think it is slowly being eroded.
My parents had a party when I was two and they were both in college. The party was raided in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1963 and my father was taken to jail. My mother and I were left alone and she was afraid we would be lynched by the neighbors. The next morning the paper wrote about a MIXED RACE COLLEGE STUDENT PARTY possibly with orgies. My parents were both suspended from the University of Tennessee.
They were both reinstated after a hearing, because there were no drugs, no underage drinkers, and it was not illegal to have a mixed race party. My parents never touched marijuana ever and I think it was because of that party. I don’t remember it, but I still feel cautious at parties and in crowds. My mother refused to return to the U. of TN and eventually finished her undergraduate degree at Cornell. My parents were so notorious that we left Knoxville as soon as my father graduated.
I grew up learning protest songs and work songs and joke songs. My mother joked about the party and it was years before I found out how terrifying it was. My mother joked that they sat at the one liberal table at the University of Tennessee. I hate discrimination and I do not understand it.
Death: is death a happy thing? Death is as much a mystery as life, and we cannot have one without the other. How could we value life if it were eternal? And we’d also get awfully crowded. I have the privilege of caring for all ages in clinic, all genders, any race that comes in the door, age newborn to 104, what joy! I get to be present when someone is dying and try to help the person and the family. There is no single idea about death or about how to “do it right” and often families struggle with multiple opinions and ideas and feelings. Death is as intense as birth and I have had the privilege to attend both.
Delight: there are many things that I find difficult and depressing, but I find delight too! The latest morbidity and mortality report from the CDC on overdose deaths, up from 52K in the US in 2015 to 62K in the US in 2016: Overdose deaths involving opioids, cocaine and psychostimulents — United States, 2015-2016. We have to work harder to prevent addiction, why do we choose addictive substances, why do people think it won’t happen to THEM?
And yet, I still find delight, taking photographs of bird, seeing patients that I know well in clinic, we laugh often, finding joy walking outside, my family and friends.
The photograph is from Mauna Loa last week. It is not a giant dinosaur nest, it’s a cinder cone. At least, that’s what a geologist claims….
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